Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!) is a two-person
public art project founded in 1991 by artist Carrie
Moyer and photographer Sue Schaffner. Between 1991
and 2004 DAM! blitzed the streets of New York City
with public art projects that combined Madison
Avenue savvy with Situationist tactics.

The campaigns dissected mainstream media by
inserting lesbian images into recognizably
commercial contexts, revealing how lesbians are and
are not depicted in American popular culture. While
questioning the basic assumption that one cannot be
“present” in a capitalist society unless one exists
as a consumer group, DAM! performed the role of the
advertiser, promising the lesbian viewer all the
things she’d been denied by the mainstream: power,
inclusion, and the public recognition of
identity.

DAM! began as a working group of Queer Nation
and quickly evolved into a stand-alone agitprop
unit whose exact membership remained anonymous for
many years. Dyke Action Machine! campaigns
presented a hybrid form of public address where
civic issues such were packaged to fit seamlessly
into the commercialized streetscape.

A typical DAM! campaign was comprised of 5,000
posters wheatpasted over the course of one month.
Neighborhoods were targeted for both the volume and
diversity of pedestrian traffic as well as their
long histories as sites for graphic intervention
and public discourse. As corporations and activists
battled for the ever-dwindling public space in New
York City, DAM! turned to other modes of propaganda
(lightboxes, catalogs, matchbooks, buttons and
stickers to name but a few) and distribution (the
US Postal Service, the Internet and by hand).

Carrie Moyer is a painter,
designer and writer. Her paintings have been
exhibited widely in both the US and Europe. During
the 1990s, she designed seminal agitprop campaigns
for the Lesbian Avengers, the Irish Lesbian and Gay
Organization, and the New York City Gay and Lesbian
Anti-Violence Project. She is a contributing writer
for such publications as Modern Painters, Art in
America and the Brooklyn Rail. Moyer is Assistant
Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of
Design. She is represented by CANADA. For more information,
visit carriemoyer.com

Sue Schaffner is photographer and
publishes under the alias Girl Ray. Her work includes
portraits of featured media personalities for
magazines. Her photos have appeared in Men’s
Health, People, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune,
Esquire, and Wired. Getty Images and
Corbis license her stock photography library
internationally. In addition to being an artist
consultant in the Creative Capital Foundation
Professional Development Program, she is
currently developing a camera review website,
MyFavoriteCameras.com. She
works out of her studio in the Gowanus Studio Space in
Brooklyn, NY.

“Their efforts are effectual reminders that k.d.
lang is not the only lesbian in the world.”
Collier Schorr, ArtForum

“Culture jamming and identity politics make for a
saucy stew in the work of Dyke Action Machine...
Gynadome, their latest Web venture, is an elaborate
and hilarious movie trailer-style teaser, involving
“sexy techno-resisters” who go back to the land.
DAM ironically terms it a “NeoLuddite reverie,” but
only certified geeks could have made it.”
Robert Atkins, Art and Media
Channel

“The agitprop duo of Carrie Moyer and Sue
Schaffner, who armed with wheat paste, ire and wild
graphic talents, have brought New York their
perversely satirical lesbo themed...ads.”
Guy Trebay, Village Voice

“Their latest effort, DAM! S.C.U.M., emblazoned
with the headline, ‘Are You A Man Hater?,’
communicates the political agenda of DAM! with a
healthy—and explicit—dose of humor. They could have
been co-scripted by Roseanne and John Waters.”
Tod Lippy, Print Magazine

“There’s some awesome activist artwork around New
York and the Internet these days—by Carrie Moyer
and Sue Schaffner, the chicks behind Dyke Action
Machine!”
Esther Hanes, Jane Magazine

“Dyke Action Machine humorously counters this
position... seen in struggles for social change and
in many posters-for instance those demanding a
bigger slice of the pie in contrast to those who
say the pie is rotten.”
Carol Wells, Center for the Study of
Political Graphics

“Though the name makes it sound like a street
fighting group of hundreds, DAM! is really the
dynamic duo of lesbian propaganda” Ted
Loos,The Advocate